“The elders will know what to do,” he mumbled.
“What?” said Luna.
“They know how to do things with leaves and berries and stuff,” Griffin said, wondering why Luna kept wobbling in and out of focus. The glowing walls of the valley were moving, accelerating past him with terrific speed.
“They should’ve saved you, too,” Griffin told Luna thickly. “I thought they were going to. Guess they didn’t have enough berries and stuff.”
“Griffin?” Luna was saying to him insistently. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Just stay still.”
Then the world undulated and crumpled up.
THE VALLEY
The soaring walls were carved with so many niches and ledges that at first Griffin thought he was inside a tree. Holes overhead let in shafts of brilliant starlight. Bats roosted everywhere, talking and grooming themselves, just like in Tree Haven at sunrise. He was on all fours, lying on a bed of smooth stones. Just lifting his head was exhausting. Cold lapped through him. Pressed close to his side, Luna watched him.
“Hey,” she said. “You picked a good place to pass out. Turns out there’s a big colony down here. They seem pretty friendly. They helped me carry you inside one of the towers. Even got these stones for you so you’d be more comfortable. I think they’re a little freaked out by your glowing.”
Griffin saw that most of the bats—every species under the moon, it seemed—were staring at him, whispering amongst themselves.
“I think they’ve sent for their elder,” Luna said.
“What about Java?”
Luna just shook her head. “They’ll be looking for us. Java wouldn’t go on without us. How do you feel?”
“Weak.” He lifted his wing and was punished with a slash of pain through his shoulder and chest. The wound was still bleeding, though not quite as freely, and the surrounding area was raised and scorched-looking. “I don’t think I can fly like this.”
“You just need some more rest.”
“Ah, so this is the glowing newborn.” The voice came from overhead as three bats fluttered into the tower and roosted on the wall overlooking Griffin and Luna.
“My name’s Dante,” said a male with a broad collar of bright fur around his shoulders and chest. “I’m one of the elders here.” When he flared his large pale ears, the starlight backlit the tracery of fine veins in their skin, making them flash silver. His nose was a shape Griffin hadn’t seen before, a bit bulbous, but he was surprised at Dante’s fur. It was sort of like his, alternating streaks of bright and dark all across the back and chest. Dante’s quick eyes darted over every inch of Griffin, and he gave a little shake of his head.
“I wish I had something to heal your wound, but this world, as you know, is not concerned with the living.”
“You know, then,” said Griffin, surprised. He’d worried they would be like the Oasis bats, still convinced they were alive and that he was some kind of demonic ghoul.
Dante smiled, amused. “Oh, yes. We all know where we are and what we are. But it’s not often we see one of the living. Occasionally there is an earthquake in the Upper World, and some unlucky bat gets dragged down a fissure and dumped here.”
“That’s what happened to me, exactly!” said Griffin.
“And me, too,” Dante told him. “Over a thousand years ago.”
Griffin stared in confusion. “And—”
“Yes, I died down here.”
“But why haven’t you gone to the Tree?”
“I decided to stay.”
“Here?” Griffin said, unable to keep the squeak of amazement from his voice. He looked at all the bats roosting on the stone walls of the tower: hundreds, presumably more in the other roosts. They were choosing to stay in the Underworld?
Dante laughed. “I take it you find this an unappealing idea.”
“But the Tree …” He looked in confusion at Luna. Was it possible that Dante didn’t understand the Tree was a portal to a new world?
“We know that many of the dead choose to enter the Tree,” said Dante, “and we wish them well. But we prefer to make our home here.”
“But I thought we were all meant to go,” Luna said. “That’s what Frieda said.”
“Yes, we know Frieda well, and before her, the hundreds of other elder Pilgrims who have spread their message across the Underworld.”
“You don’t believe her?” Griffin asked, icy doubt beginning to creep through him.
Dante looked away thoughtfully. “This will sound terrible to you. From our highest tower in the valley I can see the Tree’s glow—and believe me, I have stared at it and thought about it a great deal in the centuries I have been here. We have seen countless bats stream across the sky towards it, and talked to many, said goodbye to most, and welcomed a few to remain with us. Facts are all I trust. And it’s a fact that once a bat enters the Tree, he does not come out again.”
“Because they go to the new world,” said Luna impatiently.
“Perhaps. But how do you know? You might believe. But you do not know.”
Griffin shifted uncomfortably, his shoulder and wing pounding. Dante was right. Not even Frieda had been able to tell him what awaited them on the other side of the Tree.
“We all grew up thinking Nocturna was looking over us,” said Dante. “We never saw her, she never spoke to us. We assumed she was good and kind and cared for our well-being, but who is to know? And if she even exists, who knows what she meant for us in our deaths? Perhaps what awaits us beyond the Tree is worse than this place.”
“Couldn’t be!” said Griffin.
Dante tilted his head thoughtfully. “You may be right. Perhaps the Tree contains a world fabulous beyond our comprehension. But it may also be a place of total death that puts an end to all movement, all thought, all consciousness.”
Griffin shuddered, thinking of the terrible river of silence.
“What the Tree holds is a question we can never answer,” Dante said. “Whereas we know exactly what we have here. And we are happy with it.”
“You are?” Luna said.
“When I first died, I felt much the same as you. But I spent years travelling this world, and there is beauty in it. Perhaps not the same kind as we once knew. But it is still a place of wonders. The seas of sand, the waterfall you must have passed through to reach our valley, the dazzling play of starlight, the glow of these rock formations we chose to roost within. But these are not the main reasons we stay. All of us here have one thing in common: we are content in our deaths.”
Griffin looked at Luna, uncomprehending. How could anyone be happy being dead? It was the worst thing imaginable.
“Strange as it may seem,” Dante said, “with death also comes the death of fear. Fear is the greatest tyrant of all in our lives. It makes us greedy, selfish, violent. Here, we don’t have to worry about food, or the elements, or predators.”
“What about the Vampyrum?” Luna asked.
“They never bother us here. The waterfall’s passage encircles us and seems to protect us. Or perhaps we’ve just been happily forgotten. We’re left to ourselves entirely, and we want for nothing. Best of all, we have each other for companionship, and we have an eternity to talk and think about the universe.”
“But not be a part of it,” said Luna coldly.
“How is what we have here any less part of the universe than the Upper World, or any possible world to come? Life and freedom are in the mind. Where else do things exist?”
“I want to smell things and eat things and see real things,” muttered Luna angrily.
“Here we get to be our truest selves,” Dante told her.
“I’m nothing like my real self here,” Luna said.
“That’s because you haven’t accepted what you are. In time you will, and then know perfect peace.”
Griffin said nothing, but he was listening intently. He felt so tired of this journey, of always being afraid. Afraid of dying. Afraid of everything. What
a relief it would be just to stop being afraid. To free his mind of all those might’s and could’s and would’s that beat down at him like a perpetual hail. He looked around the inside of the stone tower, and saw bats roosting happily together in little groups: males and females and newborns, just like families.
“Dying here is nothing to be afraid of,” Dante was saying to him. “A blink of the eyes. No pain. And then an eternity of peace.”
“He’s going to be fine,” Luna said tersely. “He just needs some more sleep.”
“His wounds won’t heal,” Dante replied. “Mine didn’t.” “He’ll be fine,” she insisted.
Dante gave a gracious nod. “You are welcome to stay as long as you need to.” “Won’t be long,” Luna muttered.
Griffin felt numbingly tired, and the cold of his wound seemed to have gone deeper into his body. Pain with every heartbeat. Another drop of blood slid from his fur and hit the stone ledge, sparking light before it disappeared with a hiss. With a quiet dreadful certainty, he knew he would die if he didn’t escape soon. But was the Tree really an escape, after all? All he wanted right now was the oblivion of sleep.
He opened his eyes with a start and saw Luna beside him.
“Am I—”
“Don’t worry,” she said, and looked genuinely relieved. “You’re still alive. But we should get going now.”
“Can’t I just sleep a bit more?”
“You’ve already been asleep a while.” Luna looked away, sighed, then said, “Griff, you don’t look so good.”
“This is supposed to surprise me?”
“Your glow.”
“What about it?”
“It’s fading. When you were sleeping, it was almost … maybe it was just me, but it would lift off your body a little bit, like it did when the bats attacked you.”
“Oh,” he said numbly.
“Come on, Griff, up you get!”
The Tree. Just another journey. And what if it led nowhere at all, or somewhere worse. He remembered the monstrous burning image from Frieda’s map. Go inside and maybe they’d just be turned to ashes. He looked at all the other bats, contentedly roosting within their stone tree, grooming one another, talking. They could talk forever here. He liked talking. He was good at it. Luna said so. He’d fit right in.
“Do you think my father’s even alive?” he asked her.
“If he is, he’ll make it out. If he’s dead, there’s nothing we can do about it. Either way, he’d want you to get out.”
But Griffin knew there was something more holding him back.
“Maybe I should stay with you,” he said desperately.
“What d’you mean? I’m not staying here!”
“It just doesn’t seem fair if I get to go home, and you don’t.”
“Come on, Griff, that’s silly!”
“How about this,” he said, the words spilling out almost faster than his thoughts. “I die here, then we’ll go together, okay? Into the Tree. We’ll end up in exactly the same place. You won’t be alone. It’s only fair!”
“What’s all this stuff about fair?”
“‘Cause it’s my fault you’re dead!” he blurted. He couldn’t hold it back from her any longer. It was choking him, like something caught in his throat. In his heart.
“What’re you talking about?” she said quietly.
“I dropped fire on you.”
“But you said—”
“No. We were stealing fire. My idea, so I could impress everyone, and I was carrying a burning stick from the Humans’ fire in my claws. But it burned down faster than I thought, and I was worried I was going to get scorched, and I dropped it. I dropped it right on top of you, and you caught fire.” Luna said nothing, staring past him.
“Luna?” Griffin said miserably. It wasn’t just the guilt, the deception, that had made him tell. It was something selfish, too. He wanted to confess, to be free of it; he wanted her to tell him it was okay.
“So you didn’t know I was underneath you,” she said dully.
“I can’t remember,” he said, feeling desperately unhappy, “I don’t know.”
“You just felt it burning your claws, so you dropped it.” She was so calm and understanding. He’d hoped it would be this way. She would understand and tell him not to worry about it.
“It just happened. I didn’t even think about it. I just opened my claws and it fell.”
“You didn’t have time to check underneath.”
“No.”
“You couldn’t have taken a split second just to look?” Griffin stared at her, not breathing.
“You couldn’t have just flicked it off to the side so it wouldn’t hit me?”
“I … I guess I could’ve …” he stammered. “I didn’t think—” She laughed, but it wasn’t a nice laugh, not the kind she always made back home. “This is so unfair! I got killed because you were too gutless to look or hold on a second longer!”
“I’m sorry. I know. It was terrible.” He’d wanted to make it disappear somehow. But there was no getting away from himself, from what he was and always would be: a coward. How could he have expected her to forgive him?
“Lightning would have been okay,” she said, “and getting hit by a burning branch, that was a good story, Griffin. But some stupid accident like this? And I’m the one who dies! And you’re alive! And you don’t even want to be alive! You just want to stay here with these other dead bats!” She was shouting even louder now, flanks heaving, and for the first time in his life, Griffin felt afraid of her.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. She whirled on him. “You don’t want it? Give it to me!”
“What?”
“Your life! It’s mine, anyway. I want it back!”
“Luna—”
She pounced, batting him with her wings. “‘Cause of you, I’ll never see my mother again, I’ll never get to be alive again!”
He couldn’t bring himself to fight back; it felt wrong. She was so angry, and he deserved it—he just tensed up into a ball, flattened his ears, wings wrapped around himself, taking her blows.
“You and your stupid glow!” she was shouting. “I want that glow!”
He felt her teeth yanking at the fur between his shoulders, then bite deeper. He thought of his aura, lifting from his body, and fear pumped through him.
“Luna! Stop it, Luna, you’re hurting me!”
“It’s not fair!” she wailed, thrashing at him again and again. “You think dying solves your problems? That’s just giving up!”
“Like you in the cave!” Griffin shouted back. “Remember? You wanted to give up, too!”
One of her claws gouged his wounded shoulder, sending a terrifying jolt of pain through his whole being. Without thinking he thrust open his wings and bared his teeth, hissing. She scrambled back a few wingspans, staring, panting. She looked as though she’d just woken from a nightmare.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, Griffin … I’m sorry.” Her face crumpled.
“It’s okay.”
“No.” She was wagging her head in horror. “That was disgusting. I can’t believe I … just like those bats back in Oasis.”
“No. You just panicked, that’s all,” said Griffin. “Anyone would have done the same.”
“Did I hurt you?”
“Scared me.” For a long time they said nothing, catching their breath.
“But I’m sort of glad you did it,” Griffin admitted.
“Why?”
“For showing me I want to live,” he said. “I don’t want to die here.”
Dante led them to the tallest stone tower in the valley, its peak thrusting above the luminous hills. Every wing stroke hurt, and it took Griffin two tries to roost from the ledge at the tower’s summit.
They couldn’t see the Tree itself, just an angry glow pulsing above the horizon. Occasionally a band of intense flame, thick as a rainbow, would arch through the sky. Griffin flinched and looked at Luna, but her face was a mask, unreadable.
“Thank you,” said Griffin, wondering if he would be able to make it.
“Good luck,” Dante said. “I hope it is all you wish for.”
Half buried in mud, Goth woke. Opening his eyes was all he was able to do. The impact of the waterfall, and his collision with the ground, had broken every dead bone in his body. He felt nothing.
For a third time he had failed to kill the newborn, and it was almost impossible for his mind to grasp this. He bellowed despair through his shattered jaws and splintered teeth. He had failed, and he would not be given another chance. All that awaited him now was an eternity of suffering in the acid whirlpool within Cama Zotz. If only he could drag himself from this mud so he could accept his fate with dignity.
A wind stirred around him. “Goth …”
He shut his eyes and waited.
“Do you really think me so merciless?” said Zotz. “I am not without pity. You have suffered in the service of your god, and that is not something I choose to punish.”
Goth heard a snap, and suddenly felt his spine again, sensation pouring along it like a flooded river, coursing through the rest of his thawing body. His mangled limbs sang with pain, but one by one he felt his bones fusing together, the long fingers of his wings, his hips, his ribs, his jaws, knitting and healing.
He pulled himself from the mud, flexed his wings. “Come,” said Cama Zotz, “there is work yet to be done.”
And Goth felt himself lifted high on a powerful current and propelled effortlessly across the skies of the Underworld.
THE SPIRE
Hewn from the face of the cliff, the cathedral looked unreal, a mirage projected by Shade’s fevered brain. He tried to blink it away, but it remained. Two massive towers flanked the entrance, and further back along the high vaulted roof, a central spire soared into the air, crowned by a cross. It was a sight so familiar he gave a hoarse chuckle of pleasure. In the northern city of the Humans, not so far from Tree Haven, was an almost identical cathedral, and in its spire he’d found refuge as a lost newborn.
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